


I’m Just the Man on the Balcony, Singing “Nobody Will Ever Remember Me”

by TheGirlWithThePuffHat



Category: Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: (I promise), 5+1 Things, 6000 Years of Pining (Good Omens), ??? - Freeform, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Asexual Aziraphale/Crowley (Good Omens), Asexual Relationship, Author Is Not Religious, Author is Not Sorry, Aziraphale Loves Crowley (Good Omens), Aziraphale Loves Crowley's Eyes (Good Omens), Aziraphale and Crowley Through The Ages (Good Omens), But actually 9+1 Things, Canon Compliant, Canon Dialogue, Chubby Aziraphale (Good Omens), Crowley Loves Aziraphale (Good Omens), Crowley Was Raphael Before Falling (Good Omens), Crowley is A SAD BABY AND NEEDS A HUG (Good Omens), Crowley is Whipped (Good Omens), Crowley is a Mess (Good Omens), Crowley-centric (Good Omens), Digital Art, Embedded Images, Everyone Needs A Hug, Fanart, First Kiss, Getting Together, HAHA MCR reference, How Do I Tag, I Wrote This Instead of Sleeping, I Wrote This While Listening To Fall Out Boy, Illustrations, Italics, It’s Complicated, I’m not okay, Like Really Not Okay, Love Confessions, M/M, My First Work in This Fandom, Oh look i forgot, Ok NOW i’m done tagging this, POV Crowley (Good Omens), Pining Crowley (Good Omens), Post-Canon, Snippets, Soft Aziraphale/Crowley (Good Omens), The Author Would Like To Confirm Their Obsession With Fall Out Boy, Touch-Starved Crowley (Good Omens), WHY AM I STILL TAGGING THIS, What if crowley says he loves aziraphale a lot but aziraphale DOESN’T KNOW, What-If, because there are 9 of them, but not too drastic, he’s soft and beautiful and we love him (not as much as crowley tho), i just changed the way some scenes ended and whatnot, like lots of italics i’m sorry, look there i go again tagging this way too much, no I’m not, ok I’m done, they’re all cute and soft ok, title is a fall out boy lyric, wayyy too much
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-26
Updated: 2020-07-26
Packaged: 2021-03-06 02:07:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,080
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25535584
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheGirlWithThePuffHat/pseuds/TheGirlWithThePuffHat
Summary: Nine times Crowley says he loves Aziraphale, and one time Aziraphale hears him.Or:“Speech, Crowley thought, was just as chaotic as time. If no one heard you say it, did you really say it at all? Maybe for humans, just the taste of the words on your lips was enough, but Crowley, no matter how many times he whispered it into the air, didn’t hear the echo, and it did nothing to stop the universe from crushing him.“
Relationships: Aziraphale/Crowley (Good Omens)
Comments: 19
Kudos: 127





	I’m Just the Man on the Balcony, Singing “Nobody Will Ever Remember Me”

**Author's Note:**

> Hello! Finley here. I’m a pretty odd human-shaped being who thinks that gender is a human construct and therefore does not adhere to any specific one for any specific amount of time (To put that simply, I’m genderfluid and genderflux: my gender and the intensity of it changes). This is a short(er) fic I decided to write while I’m working on my longer one. Really, don’t ask me what it is. Mindlessly indulgent Pining Crowley™ and then a whole bunch of Crowley tropes and some kissing. This is my first Good Omens fic I’m publishing, and if there’s anything you should know about my writing with these characters it’s that I’m so bad at writing angst that I don’t even try very hard (unless it’s accidental angst). (I don’t consider pining/moping to be angst, really) So… welcome to a world of FLUFF and HAPPY ENDINGS.
> 
> Also, some actual notes: 
> 
> I always refer to Crowley as Crowley, even during the scenes where he’s Crawley. Sorry for any confusion this might cause. 
> 
> In all of my fics, Crowley was Raphael before Falling, and he Fell for loving the other angels more than he was ‘supposed to’.
> 
> I like to name things (fics) with Fall Out Boy or My Chemical Romance lyrics, if you didn’t recognize that from the title. This particular one is from Fall Out Boy’s “From Now On We Are Enemies”.
> 
> Okay, that’s it! Hope you think it’s worth reading! :)

_I’m just the man on the balcony_

_Singing ‘nobody will ever remember me’_

_Rejoice, rejoice, and fall to your knees_

_Lunatic of a god or a god of a lunatic_

_Oh, their faces are dancing,_

_They’re dancing till they can’t stand it_

_Composer but never composed_

_Singing the symphonies of the overdosed_

_Composer but never composed_

_Singing ‘I only want what I can’t have’_

_I only want what I can’t have_

> _—“From Now On We Are Enemies,” by Fall Out Boy_

* * *

**1– The Garden of Eden**

_Be funny if we both got it wrong, eh? If I did the good thing and you did the bad one?_

_No, that wouldn’t be funny at all._

Crowley was coming to realize that the angel was right—of course he was, he was an angel—and that it was decidedly Not Funny, this whole ordeal, and that he didn’t know if the angel had gotten anything wrong, but he certainly had; he’d gotten everything wrong, _oh so wrong_ ; what was he doing, falling again? It was quite the same as the first time: burning, sending him into a downward spiral that would likely end in hell (be that literal or metaphorical hell, he didn’t yet know) (perhaps he should know; he invented metaphors), the involuntary ripping away of who he was for a being of Heaven. 

Being alive was one thing. Blinking, breathing, hearing, smelling, feeling, knowing. _Living_ was something else entirely. Suddenly things _mattered_ , in ways they shouldn’t be allowed to, and breathing made the air smell like stardust, and there was wind feeding the fire of his hair, and dark things were so full of the light they would kill to drink in. 

The grass was wet under his bare feet as he stalked through the empty garden, running his thin fingers over massive leaves and picking up the leftover rain. It didn’t burn his skin. _Not holy water, then_ , he thought, bringing his fingers to his lips. The angel’s wing should’ve cast a shadow over his head, should’ve cast him into darkness, but instead Crowley felt light in a way no demon should. He came to the hole in the wall of Eden where Adam and Eve had slipped through and felt the rough edges of the stone. 

Falling had been the most painful thing he could imagine: the darkest color forcing its way into the space where color had not been, the fire, the rush of air, the way it hadn’t ended every time it should have, the way Crowley felt like a marionette, jerking up and down and up and down, lurching and getting tangled in his own strings, until God dropped the handle and he plummeted to the deepest reaches of Hell, where the world shimmered with heat and there was no air to breathe, but you didn’t need to breathe anyway. Crowley checked to make sure he was breathing now.

Falling in this new way, however, was painful in a different way. His body was unharmed for the most part. His stomach was full of acid (maybe it always had been, but now he was hyper aware of it), his legs didn’t seem to have the bones he’d told them to have, and his heart roared and grabbed with every beat, fighting against the confines of his body. Crowley now understood why ribs were called cages, but he wasn’t sure who the cage was protecting: his heart, or the world outside.

And _Aziraphale_ , so pure and light and free-willed: how could Crowley _not_ fall for him? And to further that, how could anyone look at the way he was the reason Crowley’s heart beat and say that his love was evil? To call Crowley’s love evil was to call life evil in itself: it was there, and it would not end, and if anyone wanted to take it away from him, they would have to pry it from his cold, dead hands. Aziraphale had held his wing over Crowley’s head while the storm had raged overhead, and now a new storm was building inside Crowley, fighting against all of his attempts to stuff it down.

He flew back up to the wall to find it empty, lonely, desolate. The air still smelled like angel, though, and if Crowley breathed it in like it gave him life, it was because _it did_. And he closed his eyes and let the sunlight wrap around him, let it hold him close the way nothing else would ever dare to do, let it reach a bit farther into the darkness of him and turn on the lights. And if the demon smiled then, so brightly that if Aziraphale saw it he might doubt that Crowley was a demon at all, it was because there was no other way to smile.

And if Crowley barely whispered “ _I love you_ ” from the wall of Eden, nearly too afraid to hear it himself, it was because he _did_ , _he did, he did_ , and it didn’t matter if the angel would never love him back, because he was a demon and he could _love_ , and for now, that was solace enough.

* * *

**2– The Black Knight**

_Right!_

_Right_.

Crowley stood alone in the gloom as Aziraphale marched away, taking all the light with him. He didn’t mean to, of course, it wasn’t as though he _told_ the light to follow him around; it just _did_ , and Crowley was glad of it: if Aziraphale had all the light, it assured him that the darkness couldn’t reach him. Plus, it made him feel a bit better about the way he shivered in the cold: Aziraphale had all of him, so the frigidity of misty nights and solitude didn’t quite freeze him.

The armored humans behind him stood quietly, unsure of what they were witnessing. Their Black Knight, a symbol of dissent and discord, was falling apart because of one glowing, earth-shattering, all-consuming _angel_ (who managed to make battle armor look hot).

Crowley slammed his visor down. 

“I love you.”

He turned and left the words to rot, unheard, in the sluggish mist for the rest of eternity. He did not know if humans would build on this land eventually, but if they did, they wouldn’t find any fossils of his confession. He doubted they would, though. It was, after all, very damp.

* * *

**3– Hamlet**

_Yes, alright, I’ll do that one. My treat._

Aziraphale’s look of joy was enough to cause Crowley’s heart to stutter more than… well, more than anything had ever stuttered before, certainly. He swished his way out of the theatre just quickly enough to look cool.

“I love you,” he whispered into the cold shadows, snapping his fingers once, twice, three times, maybe four hundred times, making sure Hamlet would be a success, making sure Aziraphale would get to Edinburgh safely, making sure no one would stop and ask if he was okay.

  
  


_No, I’m not okay_ , he thought bitterly. _I’m a demon in love with an angel. Funny how that works, isn’t it? God’s habit of putting the one thing you want most right in front of you, and then telling you you can’t have it?_

Crowley wondered if he would ever say it so Aziraphale could hear him. Speech, he thought, was just as chaotic as time. If no one heard you say it, did you really say it at all? Maybe for humans, just the taste of the words on your lips was enough, but Crowley, no matter how many times he whispered it into the air, didn’t hear the echo, and it did nothing to stop the universe from crushing him. He said _‘I love you,_ ’ but he couldn’t prove it, and there was no one to prove it to. He said _‘I love you,_ ’ and he’d said it before, and he would say it again, a hundred times, until Aziraphale either heard him or he lost his voice, whichever came first. 

* * *

**4– 1862**

_I don’t need you._

_The feeling is mutual. Obviously._

_Obviously_.

Aziraphale threw the paper into the water, where it burst into flames, and stormed away like the whirlwind inside him, leaving Crowley standing at the edge in more ways than one, thinking about water and magic and the universe itself. 

Water was necessary for life, but it could just as easily take that life away, a choking twist of fate, a dance that nobody could master. Water was a mirror, too, and it reflected Crowley in all of his broken fragments, it filled up the cracks in his soul and ran down the back of his neck, and it made him cold and miserable and he opened his arms to it anyway. 

Magic was fireworks, explosions, darkness, light, _Aziraphale_. Magic was the way Crowley reached so desperately for Aziraphale without moving his arms. Magic was the unseen force behind everything he did, and it had been going on for so long, the humans had begun to do it themselves. Of course, they used a different word. They called it ‘love,’ and they were blind to the magic of it. 

The universe was something else entirely, something you reached for _because_ you knew you wouldn’t be able to touch it, the kind of last-minute hope you clung to when everything else was falling apart. And if it fell apart too, it took you with it, and there was no real need for pain anymore.

Crowley stared at the bushes, still rustling from where Aziraphale had brushed past them. He could still see the angel, hurrying off toward his bookshop, his coat billowing behind him like wings. 

“I love you,” he said, and then, “so, _so much_.”

But that didn’t make any difference. 

* * *

**5– 1967**

_I’ll give you a lift. Anywhere you wanna go._

_You go too fast for me, Crowley._

Aziraphale got out of the car and walked away. As soon as the door closed, Crowley choked on a sob and the words forcing their way out of his throat: “ _I love you_.”

Crowley sped away from Aziraphale, from the words, from his feelings, from the tears that were now flooding down his face. He drove faster than he’d ever driven before. _Too fast_ . _I’ll show you too fast, angel_ , he thought. _I’ll drive myself right off a cliff._ He would, and that scared him. Maybe Hell was right about love, he realized numbly. All it did was destroy you. 

Crowley didn’t think about his Fall very often, but now he couldn’t help it. He’d loved the other angels with all of his nonhuman (and some might say nonexistent) heart, had loved them more than God wanted him to, had Fallen because She told him to stop and he said no. He told Aziraphale he’d sauntered vaguely downwards, and that was half true: he hadn’t _rebelled_ , exactly, in the same way Lucifer had, but there was nothing vague about love. He remembered the softness of the clouds beneath his bare feet (Heaven hadn’t been an office building way back when), the way his long orange hair had drifted behind him like a flow of lava, the warmth and light of his halo, the quiet chaos of stardust in his hands. He’d been punished for love once. You’d think that would stop him from loving again. 

Crowley swerved around a corner, not really paying attention to the road around him. Had he been a human, he would’ve crashed, but he wasn’t thinking about crashing, so the Bentley didn’t crash. It did play some sappy song that went ‘ _wouldn’t it be nice’_ , though, and Crowley _wanted_ , oh, he _wanted_ , with a fury that made Hell seem peaceful. He wanted Aziraphale, but not… he didn’t want him in the way humans might associate with the word ‘want’. He wanted to wrap his arms around the angel, he wanted to make him laugh, wanted to hold his hand, wanted to fall asleep tucked against Aziraphale’s warm, beautiful, soft body. He wanted to love him in a way that wasn’t twisted and mangled and broken.

Crowley tore open his chest to pull out and gaze at his twisted and mangled and broken heart; he sighed in defeat, because he was still a demon, and how could a demon love in any way that wasn’t twisted, mangled, broken? In a way that wasn’t evil? He sat back and closed his eyes, letting the Bentley drive itself back to his flat. 

Crowley was a demon. Evil was what he did, what he _was_. That meant, of course, that his love was evil too. It meant that Aziraphale’s laughter, his glowing light, his beauty, was evil. That their drives and their lunches and dinners and late-night drinks were evil. That the warm, fuzzy feeling in Crowley’s stomach, the way his face often hurt from smiling, the way the notion that he would get to see Aziraphale again was the only thing keeping him sane, was evil.

How could love be evil, if it was the only reason he still believed in good?

* * *

**6– The Phone Box**

“Aziraphale? It’s me. We have to talk.”

“Yes. Yes, I rather think we do.”

“Really? Okay. Usual place.”

“I, um… I assume this is about….”

“Armageddon. Yes.” Crowley hung up, but didn’t get out of the phone box yet. He closed his eyes and listened to the silence. It wasn’t _really_ silence, though, he noted, as he picked up the quiet buzz of the phone, the way the wind swished its skirts outside, the cars on the street, the hum of the light, his own breath, his own heartbeat. True silence wasn’t achievable in the human realm. _Life_ wasn’t silent. It raged, it cheered, it screamed, it cried, it sang. It did not sit and watch. Heaven and Hell could be silent, though, Crowley figured: they took away your breath and your heartbeat, they left you as alone as it was possible to be. 

_He listened to the quiet_ would be a better way to put it: he listened to the muted sounds, the peaceful sounds. The wind, the light, the phone. His breath. His heart. The sounds that said _yes, we’re here, because we are the sounds of Life, because the world is ugly, but beautiful things exist, and because there is nothing alive about silence_. 

He listened to the quiet until it began to convince him that it was silence, until the only thing he could hear was the pounding in his head. He blinked, realizing he’d zoned out, and the sounds rushed back in with the subtlety of a waterfall, crashing and flooding him. He blinked again, and they faded to the background. His hand, curled around the phone, shook. He lifted it to his mouth again, as though Aziraphale was still on the other end.

“Love you. Bye,” he said, casually falling apart with every syllable, and the universe warred over whether or not his voice was loud enough to be considered a sound at all. And when Crowley put the phone back on its hook and left the phone box, readjusting his sunglasses and his internal shields, the universe paused, as though it had forgotten what it had been warring over in the first place. Oh well, it thought (or, it would’ve thought, if it had a consciousness. Did it? Who knows), it probably wasn’t important.

* * *

**7– The Bandstand**

“You can’t leave, Crowley,” Aziraphale called after him. “There isn’t anywhere to go.”

Crowley turned at the edge of the bandstand. “Big universe. Even if this all ends up in a puddle of burning goo, we could go off together.” He spread his arms, bared his heart, tried to brush off the suggestion as casual, tried to drown the parts of him that wanted to fall to his knees, to beg Aziraphale, to say _run away with me, please, leave everything for me, like I would do for you; love me the way I love you; listen to me, hold me, run away with me, be my everything. Can I be your everything? Am I enough? Say I’m enough. Take my hand, take my heart, it’s yours, I’m yours. Let me be selfish in this one case. Let me want your love like this; tell me it’s okay. Destroy me._

“Go off... together?” For one second, it sounded as though he was considering it. “Crowley, listen to yourself.” 

“How long have we been friends? Six thousand years?” Crowley began to step towards Aziraphale again. 

“Friends? We aren’t friends. We are an _angel_ and a _demon_. We have nothing whatsoever in common. I don’t even like you.”

_I don’t even like you_. Crowley felt as though he’d been punched. He wasn’t sure he still had lungs. Air didn’t exist anymore, and he didn’t think it ever would again.

“ _You do_ ,” he said, jeeringly, refusing to let his voice stumble off the carousel he found himself on: spinning faster, _too fast_ , throwing him around and sideways and _yes, there was something worse than Falling_. 

“Even if I did know where the Antichrist was, I wouldn’t tell you,” Aziraphale blurted, as though he hadn’t just put Crowley’s already mangled heart in a blender. “We’re on opposite sides.”

“ _We’re on our side_ ,” Crowley snapped, blood pounding in his ears, six thousand years flashing behind his eyes. Six thousand years of seeking Aziraphale out, of trusting him, of being _so miserably in love with him_ , and he… just brushed it off? 

“There is no _‘our side,_ ’ Crowley. Not anymore. It’s over.” Aziraphale heard his own words and seemed to flinch, the tiniest bit, and Crowley turned away from the light his soul yearned to hope for. _There was nothing left to hope for_.

“Right. Well.” Crowley drew himself up to hide the way his world was crashing down. “Have a nice doomsday.” He turned and all but ran away, his legs working only because he figured they should. “And by the way, I love you, angel. Jus’ so you know.”

But Aziraphale didn’t hear, and so he didn’t know. And Crowley fled all the way back to his flat, his footsteps and his heartbeat trying to dance and tripping over the words that kept spilling from his lips, six thousand years being set free.

“I love you, I love you, _I love you, I love you, I love you, I love you_ ….”

He got some strange looks, of course, being a wannabe-goth-looking man in sunglasses stumbling drunkenly through London, crying his eyes out and declaring his love to someone who obviously wasn’t there. 

Crowley had always asked questions, but now there was a question he was too afraid to ask. Aziraphale wasn’t there. _Would he ever be there again?_

* * *

**8–The Bentley**

_You’re so clever. How could someone as clever as you be so stupid?_

_I forgive you_.

Crowley groaned, because _why in all the universe did love have to be so cruel_ , because of course the angel he was in love with would be so goddamn _good_ , because he was supposed to be angry with Aziraphale now but instead all he wanted to do was go to him and embrace him. And so he lashed out.

“I’m going home, angel,” he yelled, leaning over the top of his car. “I’m getting my stuff, and I’m leaving. And when I’m off in the stars, I won’t even think about you!”

He slammed the car door and sped away, thinking about language and how much he hated it, how he said what he really didn’t mean and couldn’t say what he did, how the bite of every word would sting for weeks to come.

His head seemed to find itself in the stars most days (or at least the clouds), and every time, he thought of Aziraphale. He thought of how cold and empty he felt when he wasn’t with Aziraphale, and how nothing could possibly hurt when he was with Aziraphale, because pain was bad and Aziraphale was oh-so-fucking- _good_.

Language, he now paused to realize, was an oddity of its own magnitude. No matter how it came to be, from theories like Babel to evolution and back again, it changed and changed and _changed_ , and humans didn’t seem to think about that too much. Crowley remembered Shakespeare, and his century of humans, and their odd habit of adding ‘th’ to the beginning of words and ‘t’ to the ends. Will would probably be horrified if he heard today’s slang, Crowley thought. One thing that didn’t change much, though, was _love_. The word, its definition, or its practice. Sure, the Victorians had had some interesting rituals around it, and as language emerged, the word was translated, but Crowley had loved Aziraphale in Mesopotamia, and he’d loved him in the Bastille, and he’d loved him in that bombed church, and he loved him now. 

Of course, the history of language did nothing for Crowley’s voice, or the words he had said so many times and would say so many times again.

“I love you,” he rasped. “And when I’m off in the stars, I—I won’t go a _second_ without thinking about you. That’s what I shoulda said.”

The history of language, vast as it was, did not help Aziraphale to hear Crowley’s words. And it did nothing to repair the damage of what Crowley had said out loud.

* * *

**9–The Bar**

And then, as if the world wasn’t horrible enough on its own, the bookshop had to go and burn down, taking Aziraphale with it, and if Crowley hadn’t already used the holy water on Ligur, he would’ve gone right home and drowned himself in it. He would even drown himself in St James Park if he could make his legs walk there. But no, here he was, sloshed in a bar and spilling his heart out to some unsuspecting bartender. 

The last thing Crowley had actually said to Aziraphale had been: _and when I’m off in the stars, I won’t even think about you_ . Of course, he had said something dismissive over the phone, but he’d already forgotten what, and what did it matter? _I won’t even think about you_. 

Light filled the bar, and Crowley leaned back in his seat as Aziraphale _appeared_ , ghostlike, across from him, shimmering and rippling like satin and gossamer, like a pebble dropped in a deep lake, like Crowley’s heartbeat. 

_Stuff happened. I lost my best friend_.

_I’m so sorry to hear it._

As if he didn’t know. As if there was anyone else Crowley would possibly miss. As if there was anyone who could destroy him so wonderfully like this, who could reach inside him and twist the fibers of his being and pull away, leaving him to realize all of his tangled knots had been loosened, if not undone completely. As if there was anything Crowley could _be_ other than _undone completely_ when Aziraphale so much as breathed. As if.

He thought about fire, how it was almost alive, how it raged and consumed and destroyed, how it killed. He thought about how the humans always compared love to fire, in its burning radiance, and thought they might not be all wrong. Love was fire: it burned, it kept you warm, but it also blinded you, it swallowed you. Crowley, who had fallen into a boiling pit with fire streaming from his limbs, his feathers, his hair, knew how it felt to go up in flames, but he had never really been burned like this before, and yet the heat only drew him in, danger beckoning and promising safety.

He thought about how the bookshop had been a raging inferno.

“We’re both going to have to get a bit of a wiggle on,” Aziraphale said cheerfully, fading.

“What?”

“Tadfield… Airbase!”

“No, I heard that; it was the wiggle on,” Crowley wrinkled his nose, looking at the disappearing angel. “Hey, Aziraphale?” He waited until those unreal blue eyes became nothing but the sky in the window, and then continued. “I love you.”

But the words, like the Principality, faded into nonexistence before Crowley could so much as wonder where either had gone.

* * *

**And… 10– Crowley’s Flat**

_You can stay at my place, if you like._

_I don’t think my side would like that._

_You don’t have a side anymore. Neither of us do. We’re on our own side._

“Yes, I suppose we are,” Aziraphale said as he took Crowley’s proffered hand, settling into the bus seat. The touch of the angel’s skin burned him inside and out, but he didn’t flinch away. Instead, he squeezed tighter, drawing in the warmth, feeding on it, clinging to it like the lifeline it was. 

“Angel,” he managed, the word scraping his throat raw. “ _Angel_.”

“Yes, dear?”

“ _Angel_.” Crowley lifted their hands, his own arm shaking violently, desperately.

“Oh, I’m terribly sorry, dear. Did you not want to hold my hand?” Aziraphale made as though to remove his hand from Crowley’s, but Crowley snatched it back.

“Fuck. No. I— _angel_ , I—I’m—ngh, _words_ , I—fuck, shit, _fuck_ , I—”

“Really, dear, is such language necessary? I’m afraid I don’t quite understand what you’re saying, either.”

And Crowley started laughing, and he started crying too, because the buildup of emotion was too much, and curled up into a ball on his seat, still holding Aziraphale’s hand. Aziraphale made a disapproving sound and pulled Crowley close to him, wrapping his arms around Crowley’s thin body, and the world was warm again, and he shoved his face into the angel’s chest and _sobbed_ , because they were okay right now, or maybe because there was a _right now_ at all. He wound his own arms around Aziraphale even more tightly, and made a sound he didn’t think he was capable of making when he felt Aziraphale’s fingers weave into his hair, a desperate whimpering moan of _yes_ , of _please_ , of _I need you more than I need oxygen_.

“Oh, _Crowley_ ,” Aziraphale breathed. “It’s been a day, hasn’t it?”

“It’s been six thousand years,” Crowley corrected thickly. “But yeah, sure. A day. I’m all _emotions_ now. Gross. Hate you to see me like this. Very undemonic.”

Aziraphale laughed the way people did when they were terrified. “My dear,” he said. “You’ve been suppressing all of this emotion for six thousand years? No wonder you’re hysterical. Do you need to talk about anything?”

“I need to say a whole bunch. Can’t, though.”

“Whyever not?”

“Would end the world,” Crowley sighed. “‘N we established that neither of us want that.”

Aziraphale didn’t comment, and Crowley relaxed into him, now that it was clear he wouldn’t be pushed away. 

The bus dropped them off in Mayfair, and when they reached Crowley’s flat, all but collapsing through the door, Crowley had stopped crying but still grasped Aziraphale’s hand tightly. He held it like summer held onto warmth as it slipped away into autumn. He didn’t let go until they reached the door to his bedroom and Aziraphale pulled his hand away to hug Crowley one more time.

“You need sleep, my dear, but I will be just out here,” he promised.

“Yeah. Yeah, okay. Goodnight, angel.” Crowley turned, and heard Aziraphale retreat back into the main room. “I love you.”

The silence that followed was not nearly as empty as it should’ve been. Crowley realized Aziraphale was still in earshot and went cold, at the same time as Aziraphale’s approaching footsteps sounded on the floor.

“You love me?” His voice was far too soft, almost disbelieving. Crowley turned around and _he was smiling_. Crowley choked on the air he didn’t need, nodded hurriedly, and began to cry again.

“You have _no idea_ .” He punched the wall. “No fucking clue. Been in love with you so fucking long, since the fucking _Garden of Eden_ , and I said it, too, I said I love you when you couldn’t hear me, and that would’ve been just another fucking time, but you heard me, and you probably don’t w—” Aziraphale pressed a finger to his mouth, effectively cutting him off.

“My dear boy, my _dearest Crowley_ , you’ve been in love with me since the Garden?”

“ _Yes_ ,” Crowley moaned, leaning on the wall. He liked the wall. It would stay there forever and he would never have to worry about it shoving him away. “Since you _gave away your fucking sword_ . I was done for. Toast. Fallen again.” He looked up into Aziraphale’s eyes, blue like the sky and oceans yearned to be, and laughed through a sob. “Want to kiss you. Please. Killing me not to. Just… just once, and… and you can forget, if you like, angel. I need you. _Please_.” 

Aziraphale raised his hands. “My dear,” he said firmly. “Let me speak. Thank you. You are, if I am to be quite frank, an idiot.” And then he kissed the devastated demon. 

Crowley made another desperate sound as he flung his entire being into the kiss, his arms scrambling around Aziraphale’s neck, his lips parting and pressing, ravenously, voraciously, kissing Aziraphale as though his life depended on it, kissing him _because_ his life depended on it, kissing him roughly and hungrily, and one of Aziraphale’s hands found his waist and drew him closer while the other ventured into his hair again, and Crowley’s legs didn’t work anymore, so they gave out, causing him to collapse. Aziraphale’s arm around his waist caught him before he hit the floor, but the kiss broke.

“Are you—”

Crowley silenced him with a growl and surged upwards again, returning his lips to the angel’s, and then their tongues were rather too busy to form words.

“For the record, I love you too,” Aziraphale said, breaking the kiss again. 

“Fuck, angel, I’m—I—” Crowley tried. “Oh, I’m alive for a _reason_ now.” He paused. “I said that out loud, didn’t I?”

“You did, my dear.”

“Wanna know the reason, angel?” Crowley found his footing again and straightened, with almost dreamlike tranquility. “Because I don’t want to do anything except kiss you for as long as I can, until Heaven and Hell kick down the door and interrupt or somethin’ horrible like that. I wanna kiss you for a thousand years. Two thousand. You think we got two thousand years?”

“I think it doesn’t matter,” Aziraphale said softly, cupping Crowley’s face in his hand.

He was right, Crowley realized, leaning into the touch. Of course he was right. It may have taken them six thousand years and a few breakdowns to get here, but _they got here_ , and that alone was worth everything else.

  
  
  


**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading!!!! I hope you liked it. Comments and kudos are always appreciated. Hope you’re having a great day! :)


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